A group of Denver law students fighting to overturn some regulations at the Supermax prison in Colorado has found that the very rules they are fighting might bar them from continuing to represent the convicted terrorists.
| letters from three men housed in Supermax were found with terrorism suspects in Spain |
After letters from three men housed in Supermax were found with terrorism suspects in Spain, federal officials issued sweeping new rules forbidding inmates from writing letters to those outside immediate family, reading the classified ads in newspapers and attending prison religious services.
The government is now arguing that the rules, called special administrative measures, or SAMs, should also forbid prison visits by University of Denver law students who are representing two of the terrorists in a civil-rights lawsuit against the government. The suit, filed in Denver's U.S. District Court, alleges that the measures violate the inmates' civil rights.
In January, Judge Wiley Y. Daniel granted the students access to Nidal Ayyad and Mahmud Abouhalima over the objection of the U.S. attorney's office. But on Wednesday, the government asked the judge to reconsider and filed a motion to put the students' access on hold while an appeal is pending. The government argues that, because the students aren't yet lawyers, they might be more willing to pass messages from the terrorists to outside contacts. Even if caught, the reasoning goes, they would not lose their licenses to practice.
| Would they be allowed to take the bar exam? As I recall most states have an ethics and morals clause. |
University of Denver law professor Laura Rovner said that argument doesn't hold water, given that the students would clearly subject themselves to federal prosecution if they aided terrorists in Supermax, which is west of Pueblo in Florence.
| Lynne Stewart thought she could pull it off ... |
"There are very real consequences, and the stakes are quite high," Rovner said. "If the students were to violate the SAMs, they will never be licensed to practice law and there would be the possibility out there of a criminal conviction for passing information."
Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales first imposed the special administrative measures in March 2005 after he learned letters sent from Supermax were being used to recruit suicide bombers in Spain.
| Inmates in Colorado wrote more than 90 letters to Islamic extremists in Spain with links to the terrorist cell responsible for the Madrid train bombings |
Inmates in Colorado wrote more than 90 letters to Islamic extremists in Spain with links to the terrorist cell responsible for the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, according to federal reports.
One of Mohammad Salameh's letters was found in possession of Mohamed Achraf, the leader of a radical Muslim cell who is charged with plotting to blow up the National Court in downtown Madrid. Salameh is serving 116 years in Supermax for his role in the 1993 attempt to blow up the World Trade Center.
Originally, the special administrative rules were to be in effect for just one year, but they have been extended annually since then. The inmates say that they now only receive certain newspapers, such as USA Today — but the classified ads and editorial-page letters are cut out.
| Why do they need the classifieds -- planning to buy a car? |
Letters to immediate family are delayed for weeks while they are translated and analyzed by the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI.
| "Dear Father, life continues to go along for me here in infidel prison. Please give wishes to mother and most especially to little cousin Fatima, and make sure Mahmoud gets the detonators to Hussein on the 19th." |
The prisoners are prohibited from sending letters to extended family or friends.
The prisoners, through their student legal representatives, have argued there was never a hearing to decide whether the letters they sent to Spain contained messages of violence.
| Doesn't need to be. They violated the rules, so they lose their privileges. That's what a 'prison' is all about. |
Colorado's U.S. attorney, Troy Eid, declined to say what was written in the letters or whether the messages incited the commuter train bombings.
After the special administrative measures were imposed in 2005, Salameh stopped eating for 89 days. When the rules were extended in 2006, he fasted for 72 days and again for 20 days, his lawsuit says. Salameh has retained his own private attorney in the suit against the rules. "Mr. Salameh was subjected to more than 100 force-feedings via naso-gastric tube," the suit says.
| That's terrible. He fasted for 181 days total: that should have been 362 tube feedings, not just 100. They were under-nourishing this man! |
Abouhalima, an Egyptian native serving a 108-year sentence for participating in the trade center bombing, said that he did not send mail to the Spanish inmates but that he received mail from them at Salameh's urging. He said he never got a chance to talk to prison officials about the letters before the restrictions were imposed.
Ayyad, an American citizen serving 117 years in prison for procuring chemicals used in the World Trade Center bombing, said that he wrote to a prisoner in Spain for one year and that he gave his letters to prison staff for review before he sent them.
| "That's another fine mess you've gotten me into, Salami!" |
"The plaintiff in his correspondence with the prison in Spain never encouraged violence, nor . . . ever condoned it in any way, form or fashion," Ayyad's suit says. "The plaintiff never received any incident reports for correspondence misconduct."
That may be because prison officials were not fully reviewing the letters until they turned up with terrorists overseas. A September 2006 report by the Justice Department's inspector general noted that the Bureau of Prisons was not "adequately" reading mail or listening to calls made by imprisoned terrorists.
Eid says the government has a responsibility to make sure that inmates do not continue to commit crimes or influence terrorist attacks. "When we have a known threat, we have to be prudent," he said. "The public expects that of us. We are supposed to see justice through from the beginning until they leave the system." |